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Guitar Hero World Tour guitar detailed, with touch pad

Guitar Hero World Tour has an uphill battle to convince gamers to buy more …

As we look upon our living rooms filled with plastic instruments, it may be time to despair: Guitar Hero World Touris beginning to look very, very good. IGN had the chance to give the game a good work out, and its preview has a good amount of exciting news. The most exciting thing could be the new guitar though, with features that could convince even the skeptics to upgrade.

"The biggest addition to the new guitar is the touch pad located on the neck. While playing a song, this touch sensitive strip allows you to alter notes during sustains by sliding up and down the strip (giving more freedom and options than what you had before with just a whammy bar). It can also be used for tapping to play notes, particularly awesome if you want to mimic a slap bass," IGN wrote. It also looks much more like a real guitar, with back and select buttons that look like the bridge of a guitar, a bigger body, and a D-pad that looks like a knob. It's wireless, you can swap out the faceplate, and I want one right now.

We already know about the drums, with the built-in cymbals and the pressure-sensitive pads, but these guitars are something else. While the general play of World Tour may mostly resemble Rock Band, at least the instruments are seeing some innovations. IGN detailed the different ways to use the guitar to create songs, and it sounds great. "The new touch strip can be used to add sustains or staccato notes. Tilting the guitar controls the pitch, raising or lowering it, enabling you to play much more than five notes. Even the back button gets some love—hitting it while strumming adds palm muting."

The game then generates the note charts so you can play your songs, or upload and share them with other gamers. The rhythm game wars may have only begun.